


what it keeps of you

by Rupzydaisy



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Found Family, Gen, Last Will and Testament, Post Film, Slice of Life, Sort Of, a post-immortality clear out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26124790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: Andy comes to realise there's more pieces of history that she's held on to, and then simply forgotten about, than she had originally thought.It makes for a good bit of irony, because in all these little snippets saved through time only some of it is precious in her eyes, and for reasons known just to her. Amongst the bunkers, caves, safe houses and storage containers, there are other treasures that if they happened to see the light of day again, could cause heads to turn towards the shadows her team try so hard to stick to.Which makes it a tricky business in clearing things out.But not impossible.Anyway, it wasn't as if she could’ve made a last will and testament.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman
Comments: 22
Kudos: 141





	1. Babica's Segedin

Andy comes to realise there's more pieces of history that she's held on to, and then simply forgotten about, than she had originally thought.

It makes for a good bit of irony, because in all these little snippets saved through time only some of it is precious in her eyes, and for reasons known just to her. Amongst the bunkers, caves, safe houses and storage containers, there are other treasures that if they happened to see the light of day again, could cause heads to turn towards the shadows her team try so hard to stick to. 

Which makes it a tricky business in clearing things out.

But not impossible.

Anyway, it wasn't as if she could’ve made a last will and testament. 

* * *

They're on a break in Maribor in between missions. With all of them together, Andy feels a balancing she’d only put into words once, and how it resulted in Booker’s exile being commuted. They lived had lived too long to waste time like that, and while it was true they all needed time to heal, he would have to regain their trust and his place within their family under their watchful eyes. It was better this way, she thought, to have him close by rather than out in the cold and left to his own devices. 

Still, there had been further changes for the team since that particular string of events encompassing her new mortality. One being the need for her to sleep and recover from missions. 

So after the mission, they haul themselves back to the quiet of their safe house. While the others opt for a walk after they clean themselves up, Andy tends to a handful of bruises before sinking blissfully into the double bed with twice as many pillows than she actually needs. It’s a welcome rest; she sleeps like the dead, dreamless and heavy, and perhaps that’s the new way things will go. 

There’s little to complain about. Not when she wakes up feeling refreshed and with a lingering sleepy idea that takes hold of her waking actions. 

When the others come back to the apartment, they open the front door to the smell of caramelised onions and meat stewing. It sends a ripple of intrigue as they make their way inside. The apartment is laughably cramped with all five of them there. But they seem to make it work. Nile and Booker squeeze past with the aim to sit at the small dining table as Joe slumps onto the small, two-seater sofa, slinging his legs sideways to allow Nicky enough space to sit beside him. 

"Are you tired old man?" Nile laughs, and takes a lumpy sofa cushion to the shoulder, even as he’s closed his eyes and looks to be napping already.

There’s a pause of running water and other kitchen noises as Andy sticks her head out of the kitchen and calls, "Come on, I need some extra pairs of hands.”

She steps out to shove a large covered pot into Booker's hands just as he settles down. He sighs, untucks his elbows, and heaves himself back up, shifting the heavy pot in his arms. Nile slides past Andy to pick up a second pot from the kitchen counter, peeking under the lid as Andy takes a third, smaller one into her own hands and heads for the door. 

“You sleep, old man.” Nicky leans over to drops a kiss to Joe’s forehead as his husband cracks open an eye and returns it with a mumbled, " _Niccolò_." Then Nicky stands to open the door, taking one side of the heaviest pot from Booker. "Where are we going, Andy? Wait, is this-"

Andy nods and begins to march off. "Yes, it's not going to take long. There's food in the fridge for later, Joe."

She gets a silent thumbs up from him before he curls deeper into the sagging sofa. 

“Oh, I don’t think Nicky’s complaining,” Booker exchanges a grin with him as they navigate the steps down to the street. “It’s kinda fun.” 

Andy leads them through the streets and Nile rolls her eyes at the obtuse comments. Over the past few months, she’s come to understand that the sheer number of cryptic references so common to the group were akin to a language of their own. A name would have a deeper meaning, a year could contain multitudes, a phrase had the power of shifting the entire tone of the conversation to drop them into a quiet silence or raucous laughter. 

It had also brought her to the prickling knowledge that sometimes, she just needed to go along with things. 

Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “Where-?” 

“You’ll see.” Nicky raises his eyebrows as they turn another corner. “They _always_ make a fuss.” 

They arrive at a small community hall and inside there are gaggles of elderly women in cardigans. As Andy crosses the threshold, she pauses to ask the closest woman a question. Then she’s waved on to a small kitchen down a narrow hallway where a radio softly plays music from another decade and the lino is curling up from the corners of the wall. A couple of women trail purposefully after them. Although they talk loudly amongst themselves, they watch the strangers closely.

One by one, Andy’s pots are stuck on the gas stove, and then the women make to usher them out of the kitchen, although Nicky lingers in the doorway to protest in Slovene with his most charming smile. 

“Still not complaining.” Booker says as he backs off out of the kitchen under a light tap from a wooden spoon.

Andy winks as Nicky’s quickly given the job of watching the pots and they leave him to the women’s fussing. They slowly walk back into the hall, hanging by the side of the room to wait. Only they aren’t left alone for long, and Andy is accosted by another woman who had taken it upon herself to shuffle closer. 

Now in front of her, the old woman slowly takes off her glasses, and her wrinkles around her eyes and mouth deepen when she asks, "Anya?" 

Then the woman rattles off a quick stream of Slovene that makes Booker stifle a chuckle and lean over to whisper in Nile's ear, "She thinks she recognises her."

“Thinks, or does?” Nile whispers back. 

Andy only smiles, drops a kiss on each cheek, and replies back in the woman’s mother tongue. It’s a welcome comment that leads to her being dragged over to the cluster of elderly women sat gossiping with their cups of tea. Nile and Booker watch on as the older women make a fuss of her, introducing themselves quickly, as Andy joins in the conversation as if she’d been there all along. 

Nicky joins them a few minutes later with a bowl, "It's nearly warmed up, but I couldn't wait." 

"Seems like they can't either." Booker nods at the sea of cardigans crowded around Andy, now plying her with thick slices of fruitcake, and then his face creases up into a silent laugh. 

"They remember her, from the seventies. Or rather, her mother." Nicky explains as he polishes off the last few spoonfuls from the bowl. "And maybe stories of her grandmother. This is an almost _legendary_ segedin."

Nile almost laughs at the reverence in his voice, but then his words click. "Wait, her grandmother?"

"Yeah, I think she moved to Spain, in the thirties?" He grins, "But she liked to visit the neighbourhood, to come back to family, and to this place that she used to come with her mother when she was younger. It used to be a school."

Slowly, Nile grins back. 

Inside the kitchen, the goulash is dished up, and trays of mismatched bowls brimming to the lip are brought out. It sends a wave of excitement around the room. Andy extracts herself from the circle of grandmothers and old aunts to help to hand out the spoons while Booker traipses after her with a stack of napkins. 

The team stick around just long enough for them to each eat a bowlful of Andy's famous goulash. 

Nile pauses after the first spoonful to throw out a quick, "This is amazing!" 

Beside her, Andy leans back in her chair and scratches her chin thoughtfully. "I think the last time I was here, it was the sixties? And Marjan there remembered my _grandmother's_ visit. Back then, she was quite happy to try bribing me for the recipe."

There was a certain look in her eye that had Nicky putting down his second bowl to shift in his seat and face her. "What have you got planned, Andy?" 

After a moment, she reaches into her jacket to pull out a folded piece of paper. "Let’s just say I'm feeling generous in my old age." 

They watch her walk over to the woman, Marjan, and with a smile, Andy hands over the paper. The woman fumbles in her handbag for her glasses, and then suddenly there's a babble of raised voices around the pair as she unfolds it and begins to read it out. A few minutes later, Andy emerges from the cluster of old women, rubbing furiously at her cheek to try and get the red and pink lipstick imprints off. 

“Fuck.” She mutters under her breath.

And although there's pigment smeared across her palm, the frown pinched between her brows remains at odds with the hint of a smile tucked away at the corner of her lips.

"Real philanthropic work there, boss." Booker remarks and quickly leans back to avoid her light punch to his shoulder. 

"I figured I've got a few things to bequeath between now and... whenever.” Andy nods towards the door, and her family rise to their feet with a chorus of warm goodbyes at their backs. “Besides, Marjan really wanted to know what goes into my _babica's_ segedin."


	2. The Rodin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello lovely people who have subscribed :)

James Copley stares at the statue, and then at the clothed flesh likeness in front of him. While his mouth hangs open, his eyes flick back and forth. And he knows he's been standing in silence for too long, so he says the only thing that's running circles in his head. 

" _That_ is a _Rodin_."

Behind the oldest former immortal in existence who merely nods in confirmation, the youngest immortal grins while mouthing, _‘I know!’_

Nile had been gleeful the moment she heard Andy's decision to donate the statue. They passed through the Provence to collect it and her enthusiasm at the thought of it being put in a museum had also been unwavering. It buoyed her up during the long drive down, and she had snuck several peeks at the statue in Andy's bag on the ferry. It had continued all the way up until the moment she finally cajoled an invite to Surrey for the drop off out of her, instead of waiting at the safe house. _"Come on, Andy, please! I want to see his face when you tell him."_

And she hadn't been disappointed. 

But as Copley blinks over his abandoned mug of coffee with his eyebrows racing for his hairline, Andy stares back at him. Her experience of stunned silences consisted of a long and plentiful list so it's easy for her to consider all the things that he _could_ be thinking of. However, she quickly comes to realise that his silence is likely to be hiding nothing deep. It was most likely a wondering if the bare kitchen counter top was clean enough to have the sculpture sitting on it. 

"That's a Rodin, _of you_." James Copley finally tears his eyes away from the sculpture to run a hand over his face. "And you were keeping it in a-?"

"An abandoned mine shaft." Nile helpfully finishes off the sentence. 

If Andy had eyes in the back of her head, she knew she'd be seeing Nile rolling hers, again. 

Still, glad that the newbie's awe was wearing off enough to find the overall amusement of the situation, Andy rehashes her original request into a simpler sentence. "Put it in a museum, Copley."

He hums in acknowledgement but again, he has to drag his eyes away from the long-lost, maybe completely unknown, masterpiece sitting in his kitchen. Eventually, he finds his words. "Profit or no profit?"

"No profit." Andy replies, after the briefest of pauses. “Find a good cause.” 

"Consider it done." Copley replies, looking back down, feeling the weight of her trust once more. Then he frowns, unable to stifle a question rearing up in his mind, "What was he like?"

She takes a moment to try and recall, and then shrugs. "More easier to model for than Praxiteles." 

Behind her, she feels rather than hears Nile's shock. 

"For fuck's sake, just let me know when it's done." She picks up her coffee and heads out the back door into the garden to enjoy the crisp morning sunshine, leaving the two of them flabbergasted at the breakfast bar. 

Silence fills the room again and he leans on the counter top and mouths the artist’s name. Beside him, Nile slowly loads up a plate of chocolate and blueberry muffins in a daze. "It's like this with them. Every time I think I've got my head around it, someone says something, or _does_ something, and it's all out of the window again." 

Copley nods sympathetically and reaches for his cooling coffee to take a long sip. "I think… I need go back through the research." 

Nile waves a muffin at him. "Let me know what you find." 

"Can't you just...ask?"

She scoffs and picks up her plate and coffee to follow Andy out in the garden. "You think I'd get a straight answer?" 

"Yes, probably not," he tells the empty kitchen. 

Later, he and Nile would drag out the boxes of research and filter through it for artwork, if only to dig deeper down that rabbit hole. It would throw up more than a few surprises. But for now, Copley breathes out slowly into an empty room, and tries to regain some of his composure. 

Three weeks later Andy gets a text, ‘ _There is an orphanage in Bouza which sends its thanks to a generous and kind-hearted donor.’_ She smiles, pockets her mobile, and heads out into the midday heat to treat herself to some fresh baklava.


	3. The Axe

There’s weapons, of course. 

In the team's eyes, it seems a shame to get rid of them when they’d launch a thesis or furnish an exhibition corner well, and Andy grudgingly agrees, especially if there's good lighting and the glow strikes off the engraved blades nicely. 

It still feels strange, because they are tools. They were made to be used, and now they were to spend their retirement inside a glass box, or worse, inside locked cupboards away from warm palms to hold them the way they were meant to be.

Nicky helps her pack things up, and casually offers his take on it. “I think, maybe we are hoarders.”

“I think we move about too much to be.” 

He brushes the dust off his hands and plops them onto his hips. “Good luck decluttering the Halfeti cave.” 

It makes her groan at the thought of it. “Don’t remind me.” 

They keep working in silence, until Nicky begins humming a tune under his breath, something he must have heard on the radio earlier, or in the car. Or maybe at the opera a few centuries back. It all blurs together, until last week and last decade could easily be switched for each other in sheer forgetfulness. 

They find a pair of fine daggers, boxes full of old guns, broken arrowheads she’s never bothered to sweep up and bin that have now fallen into cracks on the floor and threaten to poke through the soles of unsuspecting trainers. 

She comes across a cluster of old arrows wrapped in a burgundy piece of fabric and she vaguely recalls the feel of it against her cheeks, protecting her from the harsh desert sun. 

The arrows fall out because although they were bundled together, there's not much of the cloth left. Time had shred it into tatters, and that particular century of her life was more faded and opaque than when Andy had last sat down and recalled it. Memories were fickle creatures, and she'd like to think she can still recall the smell of the desert air before the rain, the feel of her damp clothes as they set up the tents for the caravan, and how she had sat underneath the entrance and kept guard while watching the rain come down. 

But she would be a liar if she said she remembered the full memory. Sometimes, all she had was a vague impression, a taste of emotion that lingered if the memory was a particularly strong one; her joy, her melancholy, or her rage. 

Even then, there were those she'd rather forget and others which were decidedly too boring to still be carried around inside her brain. 

A thought strikes through the mists of time. 

Slowly, Andy lowers down another blunderbuss with scratches all over the handle into the box, not worn from use but from a particularly nasty scuffle that had only ended when she had regained her grip on the trigger and fired it. 

When she stands, she teeters on her hesitation, “I have something to ask you.” 

“Anything, Andy.” 

She smiles at that and leans forward to drop a hand on his shoulder. “Nicky, when I am gone, I want you to do something for me.” 

“Anything.” He repeats it solidly, and she loves him all the more for it. 

It’s not with the crinkle of grief caught behind his eyes that she sometimes sees Joe trying to banish, or the minute hesitation Nile has before she kicks through doors and draws enemy fire with the acute knowledge that she might take enough bullets to fall and then rise again _before_ making it to cover. 

He says it plainly, in the same way she knows asking him this is the right thing to do.

“I want you to offer my axe to Nile. She doesn’t have to take it, not if she doesn’t want to or if she prefers something else. But...just ask her, that if she does want it, I’d be glad.”

And now that she’s said the words, she feels lighter for it. 

“Of course, Andy." 

They smile at each other for a moment, and just as Nicky turns to pick up another empty box to fill, she hauls him into a hug. He responds in kind with his warm arms around her shoulders and back, and she holds on for a little longer than usual, just because she can. 

"Thank you." 

* * *

When the offer finally reaches Nile's ears, not long after Andy's final death, she nods and says she'll think about it. 

And she does, for a long time. 

The axe is carried around with them as they move to continue their work, even after a brief discussion on whether to store it safely for the meantime, but in the end it goes where they go, and continues to cross land and sea and air. 

It remains sharp, lovingly cared for by four pairs of hands that polish the blade and rewrap the handle as the leather unravels. 

Eventually, the morning comes when Nile settles on her decision and takes it into her palms after a brief warm up run down the beach. The safe house they're staying at is a secluded one on a farm at the end of a long country lane. No one would ever see them train in the fields or the barn. 

With Joe and Nicky's eyes on her, she rotates her wrists, feels the weight of it and its history in her shoulders. "Andy wielded this, I'm not sure I'll be any good with it, even with the few training sessions she gave me. But I want to try." 

Nicky smiles and Joe swipes a hand over his eyes but they both stand with their swords and ready themselves to spar with her. 

It is a weapon, after all, and made for one use and one use alone. Nile takes it with her on the next mission and it takes its payment in blood and broken bones. The mission is a success and they walk out with all the stolen children. 

At their next safehouse, Nile cleans it down and packs it back up for the next mission, and so a little piece of Andy remains within them in each battle. 

As the years go on, the axe is passed between them, Booker takes charge of it for a year, hacking through hired mercenaries for warlords, and the blade sings with each blow. 

Once, Nicky and Joe trade it off during a drawn-out battle. It passes between them in an elegant dance, until it and their arms seem like extensions of the same body. 

But time goes on, and their fighting styles evolve further. Nile picks up newer weapons and circles back to older ones for more nostalgic reasons. The axe is still cleaned and polished, and then hung in their most visited safe house, kept under the most secure locks and keys the modern world has to offer. 

When the world seems a little darker from burgeoning wars or tragedies, or they embark on a new grim fight that seeks to eat at the edges of their old souls, Nile makes the journey there and takes down the axe. She carries it on her back into battle with her small family, and the four of them are reminded of the strength and courage of its former owner who spent millennia fighting for the good in the world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love the axe :)


	4. Lykon

The clearing out continues in fits and starts. Months go by where Andy barely spends a thought on the past, so caught up in the work they are doing and ensuring that Nile feels a part of the team. They stick together in their search to find a new balance within the group, and in doing so, rotate through old safe houses and set up a handful of new ones. 

It involves shifting their creature comforts across from one to another, as they do, they rediscover lost treasures, and Nile gets introduced to these things that have travelled across the years with them. 

Although revisiting hideaways from more than a few decades ago, seemed to throw up some strange things.

They bring down candles and a desk lamp to the cellar and she finds three clay pots of currency from across two centuries and twice as many decades, and none of it usable in any of the countries that do still exist.

After unearthing a trunkful of clothes from the 1800s, Joe goes to the trouble of breaking the rusted lock and hinges, and ropes both Andy and Nile into playing dress up for a lazy afternoon in the hallway while Nicky is charged with taking some snaps on a somehow still-working Polaroid camera. 

Later, Andy digs her way through the corner she’d assigned herself to clean out before dinner, and stumbles across a heavy box of writings in a handful of dead languages. She finds it’s not locked, and when she lifts the lid, she finds things she hadn’t realised she’d kept.

_So you wouldn’t forget._

Her breaths turn shallow as she pulls out a necklace of strung shells nestled on top and runs a finger on the fragile edges. There were palm leaves and papyrus written in her own hand, and even slabs of sun-baked clay she had pressed herself. Underneath them, wrapped in a scrap of silk, was an ivory tusk engraved with a language long since lost. 

Her hands gravitate towards a slab of clay as she closes her eyes and runs her fingers over the surviving indents. 

"What is it?" Joe asks, as he takes a break from wrestling the dresses into bags so that they could donate them to the local community centre’s drama club. 

In the low light of the cellar, Andy’s face is almost eclipsed. "Old memories." 

He sits back on his heels to see the open box in front of her. "What will you do with them, boss?"

“I’m not sure,” she whispers back. 

* * *

The next morning she hands over the box to Booker, along with her written translations, for him to send it off to people who’d make better use of them than her, and thinks that's the last of it. 

Only, she gets a desperate reply via Booker from a co-signed email from a trio of students thirty-two hours later. The quirk of his lips coupled with his raised eyebrows and a shrugged shoulder earns a dignified sigh out of her.

“What is it?”

"They're _begging_ for an interview."

“That was quick.”

"They’re students. I’d say it was energy drinks, but it’s probably the sheer high of seeing your translations." He reads aloud the short email containing the garbled request to her, and then frowns, “Yeah, it’s not that intelligible. And kinda desperate. But they’re definitely asking for an interview." 

Andy shakes her head. 

"Come on, you've given them their equivalent of El Dorado. It can't hurt for a quick face to face."

“Bleeding heart.” She comes to skim read the email over his shoulder, "Not for an hour though."

"Yeah?" His fingers are poised above the keyboard, waiting on her final decision, and he belatedly thinks of adding _don't shoot the messenger,_ if she decides against the meeting. 

"Fine. Twenty minutes. In and out." 

Booker nods and begins typing as she sits back down. "It'll be like all their Christmases have come at once." 

She takes a swig of her beer and props up her feet on the spare chair beside him. “At a place of our choosing...somewhere that does good pastries.”

* * *

The next morning, she goes with Booker to the coffee shop and they arrive only five minutes earlier than they need to so that they can get in an order of hot coffee and a bag of warm, sticky buns.

She finds them a table where they can sit with their backs to the wall, out of sight of the cameras facing the main counter and till, and they chat quietly in a Franglish that uses far too many old colloquialisms from Booker’s youth and fragments of Russian, right up until three nervous looking grad students approach the table. 

"Ma’am? Are you Andromache?" The young woman wearing an oversized hoodie asks, looking as if she hadn’t slept for a week. 

Booker doesn't manage to suppress his snort, and Andy kicks at his shin under the table with the heel of her boot. "Yes, that's her, I'm Booker. We emailed."

The young woman nods at the others, seemingly appointed speaker out of the trio. "Oh, that's great-" 

The young man behind her turns to the third student and whispers a little too loudly. "That was French? But it wasn't...normal French?" 

“I think so.”

Behind her sunglasses, Andromache rolls her eyes. "Timer's running, we agreed twenty minutes."

The reminder jerks them back to their senses and there’s a sudden flurry of activity as the students drag extra chairs over to the two-seater table and haul out their notepads. "Do you mind if we record you speaking? It’d be like getting a chance to step into the Library at Alexandria, but with the chance of keeping a little too."

Andy swaps a quick look with Booker and then nods, "Audio only.”

"Thank you so much, ma'am. So much!" 

The young woman sits down as her colleagues quickly set up the recorder and take their seats too. Andy looks on at their eager faces, feels the crackle of excitement in the air, and then asks, “Alright, where do you want to start?" 

“We came up with a list last night. Your transcription from this clay tablet mentions a noble warrior, a celebrated man, with _wit as sharp as his sword._ Can you walk us through it?” 

With another quirk of her lips, Andy takes off her sunglasses and begins to relate the context; the story of Lykon, half-myth, half-truth, and all of it history. 

There had been no place for Lykon on Copley’s boards, not when he lived and died so long before writing became commonplace enough for someone to note his deeds down for posterity. Anything that did survive through the years to contain a mention would hold a loss regardless. Yes, it would note a fearless man’s, a battle won, but nothing that would tie his name in place where it belonged, where it could be treasured for a little longer after she was gone. 

So Andy and Booker remain there in the cafe for an hour and twenty-three minutes, and then rise from the table first. 

The students stare at each other before one’s hesitation crumbles and pipes up, “If we have questions?”

Booker shakes his head as he collects the half-eaten bag of buns off the table for later. 

“Ask.” Andy replies truthfully, sliding her sunglasses back on. “You can use the same method to contact me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this is in the same line of the whole, you die for a second time when your name’s last mentioned by someone still living. Obviously the whole team will have all of their memories of Andy, but she wants protect Lykon's legacy too.
> 
> Also...I had another idea, so one more chapter after this one. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. The Bracers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovely readers, and thanks for subscribing if you did :)  
> Last one, because i’m a sucker for outside POVs

They don't do repeats. 

She's always been adamant about it. They're too risky, either from using the same contacts who ask too many questions and get too greedy, or for returning to the same vicinity where someone’s flaky memory usually ends up causing panic or stoking revenge. 

"How can it be you?" 

Andy hears the voice from the other side of the street, and she pauses, deliberating on whether to feign ignorance or distraction. 

_Ignorance_ , she decides, and turns to face the speaker.

But in turning, she was slower than the woman, who now stood mere feet in front of her. A quick assessment doesn't alarm her in any way, she isn't armed, and Andy doesn't feel a chill down her spine or a twist in her gut from the age-old honed senses that come from walking in shadows and through long, dark nights. 

No, this woman is young, _aren’t they all?,_ with dark brows and a face cast in shadow from the small pools of light thrown out from the streetlamps. 

The suburbs are quiet, and the road is empty, which is a small consolation when the woman closes the distance and looks on Andy’s face properly. It gives Andy the chance to do the same. 

Like Andy, she wears loose, light clothing to stave off the humidity, and dust-scuffed trainers. Unlike Andy, she's probably worn her clothes more than once and not bought them from a market stall dealing in second hand clothes.

But standing there together, they each seem like any other people who could happen upon each other on the street. 

It makes Andy wonder if this is a true case of mistaken identity, until she speaks again.

"Is it you? You haven't changed." She breathes out slowly. Her voice has an edge of insistence even though she speaks softly, "I remember you from the convoy. You helped get us out past the soldiers."

"I'm sorry, I don’t know who you are."

"Your arms." She points at the worn leather bracers with a forlorn smile. "I remember you."

The sureness in her voice turns almost reverential, and it makes Andy sigh loudly. "No, you think I'm someone else. 

"I was only a child, eleven years old. You were there, and we made it to safety. I couldn't sleep, so many were crying. I don’t remember much, but it was a long night." 

Andy opens her mouth to argue again, that she's a tourist, that she doesn’t know anything about this. All this time with the rule of _no repeats_ , she already knew she should have chosen some other language, then shrugged and simply walked away. 

The woman cuts Andy off because she can get a word out. "It _was_ you."

Her dark brows crease up with her insistence, as though all she needed to do was persuade her. "You sat in the van with us. I remember." The woman smiles again, "You fixed my braid."

"I'm a tourist. "Andy sighs, looks to the ground, and shakes her head.

Only she didn't need reminding. She did recall enough to place the woman; the cluster of three small moles under her right eye matched her memory of a tear stained girl with her braid undone. She had clung to Andy's side as the city burned around them.

It had been one incident of the many in the last handful of years where Andy had felt she was papering over the cracks on a leaking dam. She had the smell of smoke clinging to her for the better part of a decade. Clothes were shed along with long streams of curses. Her frustration had reigned high as she buried her used names and burned aliases, and her team had stepped from one battle into the next in a macabre dance.

Wherever she went, whatever they did, it never seemed to be enough to tip the balance, not even for a fraction of time.

The woman takes her silence as permission to continue. 

"I'm a teacher now. I teach my children how to read and write, and they will never know the fear I felt that night, because it won't exist for them. Because of you. I remember those cuffs on your arms, I watched you fight from the truck. You kept us safe." 

When Andy manages a nonchalant shrug and turns to leave, the young woman lightly touches her shoulder, and suddenly she's locked into place. "You made an impression on a young girl.”

Despite herself, it brings a smile to Andy's lips under the dappled streetlight, even as she waits for the woman to remove her hand.

“I never got to say thank you. I want to now. Please look at me.”

When Andy turns her head slowly to look at the woman’s watering eyes, she sees the image of a young girl with her hair falling out of her braid within their depths. 

The woman gives with a soft exhale, "Thank you."

She lets go of Andy’s shoulder, taking away the little warmth her hand had sunk through there, and Andy doesn't know what she's thinking as she moves away, looking to cross the road. Her own words ring loud in her head, _no repeats._

It's something she's drummed into the whole team for centuries. If there was a handbook for immortals, then it would be on the first page, in big letters, in the most lurid shade of red to serve as a tried and tested warning. 

But there’s a sudden rush in her blood akin to the slide of her axe’s hilt in her hands or the feel of dropping of a cliff. If she lets the breath in her lungs escape without acting, she knows she would miss something she could never claw back. Before she knows it, she's rolling out her shoulders and her internal berating switches to merely chiding herself for terrible decisions and having what seems like an ever-softening heart. 

"Wait!" 

Quickly, Andy pulls off her bracers. The leather peels away from her forearms and leaves it bare. Her skin begins to cool immediately, but the goose bumps that rise up aren’t from the night air. She's worn them for years, and now handing them over seemed like handing over a small piece of herself too.

But she does it anyway. 

"Here." 

The woman smiles as she takes them in her hands, even as tears fall from her eyes. "It was you. You do remember."

Clapping her shoulder lightly, Andy smiles back, "You should forget me." Then, without wasting another moment, she turns and walks off.

By the time the woman dries her face, she's alone in the street. 

Although it had felt like time had slowed to a crawl, the whole encounter had only taken minutes, and by the time she's back home the young woman had almost convinced herself that she had imagined it all, if only for the two leather bracers tucked away safely in her bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
